Assuring successful change

Pelicam call to arms on UK plc project expertise

Pelicam CEO Peter Mayer commented:“Over the past 10 years there has been a tremendous improvement in the discipline of project management and organisations like ours can now provide the specialist expertise businesses need to manage programmes successfully. There is still room to improve and as a profession we are working on it. But great project teams and great plans are often let down by a lack of support and involvement at board level, which is a significant factor in the failure of many programmes. Many boards simply do not have the skills needed to manage major programmes. We believe this can and must be addressed, and are calling for a five point action plan by business leaders and their stakeholders.”

The Pelicam Plan calls for business leaders to:

1.Undertake continuing professional development in managing and sponsoring major change, particularly where IT is concerned.

2.Adopt a career management approach that allows project sponsors to stay in role long enough to be fully accountable from concept to implementation.

3.Appoint non-executive directors with experience in delivering major change programmes.

5.Disclose their performance on major programme investments in company reports.

Peter Mayer added:“Stakeholders have an important role to play in holding organisations to account on project management and we’re seeing that happen in the public sector, thanks to bodies like the National Audit Office. In the private sector that role has to be filled by shareholders and business institutions, and we urge them to press for more visibility and accountability. If stakeholders and business leaders start to take active responsibility for programmes in this way it will reduce the number that fail and considerably improve organisations’ operating and financial performance.”

The Pelicam Plan stems from a report into why major programmes fail by Pelicam associate David Ferguson.